The Palace of Shah Abbas

On the northern slopes of the heights of Siyah Kuh, south of the city of Garmsar, there are a series of abandoned buildings, known as 'Qasr' or 'palace', of which the most famous is called 'Palace of Shah Abbas'. The external cladding of this building is composed of large white and polished limestone boulders. The palace has six towers and its main door is formed by a single block of stone. On either side of the entrance are two small rooms that were guard posts. In the vast interior there are about twenty small rooms and in the east wing of the building there is a large and simple courtyard with a high cross vault on one side. In the west wing there is a large throne room with a series of niches around its walls, the entrance to the living room is provided with an ivan and underneath this room there is an ancient cistern. The water needed for the palace was procured through ceramic and stone pipes from the source of Cheshme-ye Shah on the slopes of Mount Siyah Kuh. The structure of this artificial channel is very interesting. The ceramics discovered around this building belong to the timurid era and, later, were repaired and reused during the Safavid period.